Just getting all my ducks in a row. I've finished up body work and it's now time to lay some primer.

So I quickly whipped up some plans for a spray booth.

It will take up half of the garage and will be flush against the garage wall and my work bench, which will support the fans.

Lighting will be outside, as well as the fans and the compressor. I'll be sure to turn off the water heater and I will turn on the fans and lighting before I spray and after, once the fumes have completely exhausted.

All seams will be duct taped with the exception of the car entrance and side door. I will use painters tape there so it'll be easy to cut and reseal from the inside.

What do you guys think about the design and is there anything else I should consider? I will be using a 3M half-mask, a disposable painter's suit(s), gloves, basically covered head to toe. Is the 3M mask with the P100 filter the best half mask to use?

I want to be safe and would prefer to keep all fumes out of the house considering my garage is attached to my home and my wife and baby are inside. Can't ever be too safe.

i would reverse the air flow if shooting paint. primer should be fine, the fans blowing air into the booth will create a trash problem. the mask to use is a 3m 7193 i beleive the p100 filter is for welding and dust. hope this helps. oh yea i can tell you from experiance that a 20" box fan won't pull enough air when shooting clear or a single stage even with an hvlp gun, you won't be able to see what your doing after the first coat. i learned from my cut in booth to test it first my fan pushes more air than the inlet filter lets in creating a vaccum sucking in the plastic

I too was going to suggest the option of being able to turn the fans around and run them the other way with the single fan removed or not turned on.
You'll be able to test as you go with primer and base,,,
In fact you won't need the best performance till the last coat of clear..Sometimes base over spray settleing back down on the surface can help, not the case with the last coat of clear though..You want that cloud out of there fast but not so fast you stir up dust.

In any event start at the "upwind" end of the booth and work/spray towards the out fan(s)..

** do not have the compressor in the same room...it will cast oil into the air through its breather opening**

i would reverse the air flow if shooting paint. primer should be fine, the fans blowing air into the booth will create a trash problem. the mask to use is a 3m 7193 i beleive the p100 filter is for welding and dust. hope this helps. oh yea i can tell you from experiance that a 20" box fan won't pull enough air when shooting clear or a single stage even with an hvlp gun, you won't be able to see what your doing after the first coat. i learned from my cut in booth to test it first my fan pushes more air than the inlet filter lets in creating a vaccum sucking in the plastic

Maybe have some tear-away sections of plastic near where the lights are (but on the inside) so that if the paint builds up on the interior walls you can peel them off and have a clean section to let in the most light?

I would skip the filters on the exhaust side all together and just put a screen in to prevent bugs from coming in when the fans are off. I would be afraid that you will restrict flow too much trying to pull through two sets of filters. I assume you are using inexpensive box fans.

I would skip the filters on the exhaust side all together and just put a screen in to prevent bugs from coming in when the fans are off. I would be afraid that you will restrict flow too much trying to pull through two sets of filters. I assume you are using inexpensive box fans.

2 cents from the new guy

PS. very cool project

Thanks! I'm itching to get this thing done already.

I've thought about doing away with the filters but I don't want overspray to get on our vehicles and especially my neighbors. Would some $1 filters catch the overspray? I know they don't filter as well as some quality filters do.

When I painted my 41 Chevy 15 years ago my setup was almost identical. My booth was two cars wide so I had three fans blowing in through two furnace filters and one sucking air out with no filter. This pressurized booth setup had no problems could completely clear the entire booth of any "fog" from clear coat in less than two minutes. I'm getting ready in just a few weeks to build another booth so I can spray my deuce. Will be of the same design but slightly smaller.

When I painted my 41 Chevy 15 years ago my setup was almost identical. My booth was two cars wide so I had three fans blowing in through two furnace filters and one sucking air out with no filter. This pressurized booth setup had no problems could completely clear the entire booth of any "fog" from clear coat in less than two minutes. I'm getting ready in just a few weeks to build another booth so I can spray my deuce. Will be of the same design but slightly smaller.

Thanks for posting those pics Centerline. Your booth was actually one of the examples I used to create my design. Sounds like it'll work well.

I have also just completed spraying in a very similar setup - with filters on the inlet and exhaust
Learning from spraying the epoxy with two exhaust fans - I increase them to 4 and it is night and day better.
(this was using $20 walmart box fans)

if i remember right my last summit tools catalog had an exhaust fan in the under 200 dollar range should be more than enough. or any fan that can push or pull 1800 to 2500 cfm, with plastic walls i would go with the lesser of the two. my cut in booth is upstairs in my shop and i use attic vent fans 16x16. i would change it if i didn't have to cut holes in th side of my shop, it works great for what i use it for. I have also been useing it for three yrs and no explosions. i even sprayed thinner at it to calm my nerves the first time i used it, i figured if a highly flammable liquid like laquer thinner wont flame up i should be ok. oh yea a 20in explosion proof fan is about 450 to 500 bucks not in my budget. also to be safe i turn the fan on before i start and turn it off only when the fumes are gone, don't want any startup electrical spark to cause a problem

Also a word about wetting the floor - wet the floor but then let it almost completely dry, you want to glue the dust down by "bonding" it to the floor, but if you spray with the floor full wet you run the risk of the humidity being too high and causing the finish to "blush". Wet the floor several hours before you paint and run the fans a while to dry it down before you start spraying.

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